Tuesday, June 26, 2018

SOLTuesday: Poetry in the Park

I’ve been
going to a monthly poetry salon for about six years. JP Howard is the founder
of Women Writers in Bloom; she invites a writer, usually a poet, to give a
short workshop, read from her (usually it’s a woman) work, answer questions,
and it’s all followed by an open mike.

BryantPark, behind the New York Public Library in midtown, has hosted readings during
the summer for several years now. And tonight Women Writers in Bloom presented,
for the second or third year, four of its established and emerging poets. It
was a beautiful evening, and each poet was stupendously better then the
previous one.

I arrived a
bit early and saw several people I knew, from the salon, but also a woman from
the gym. Found a seat, ate the delicious Indian food I’d gotten from the food
fair over on Broadway, and absorbed the moving and inspiring poetry, and tried
to ignore the sirens of multiple emergency vehicles storming down 42ndStreet. (Had something gone badly wrong
somewhere? Who knows—it’s only New York City.)